


malum et malus

by moonrocks



Category: Better Call Saul (TV)
Genre: Blood, Cooking, Domestic, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Metaphors, Minor Violence, in an evil drug lord kind of way of course
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:41:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23077204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonrocks/pseuds/moonrocks
Summary: Lalo Salamanca continues to be a problem.
Relationships: Eduardo "Lalo" Salamanca/Ignacio "Nacho" Varga
Comments: 26
Kudos: 92





	malum et malus

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies if I get any details wrong from the show. I'm due for a rewatch but haven't found the time yet with this season currently airing.

Nacho thinks of poison. 

He thinks of methamphetamine, bleach, medication. Blue chalky pills that should be rotting inside a sewer grate somewhere instead of disintegrating in a reservoir. He thinks about polluted drinking water, refried beans and brown rice, maggots wriggling on plastic plates skewered by plastic utensils. He thinks about Lalo Salamanca. 

At the racetrack on the outskirts of Albuquerque, Lalo lounges on the hood of his car while Nacho leans against the fence, watching. The sun is sick and sweltering, the desert dust miasmic. Lalo takes a bite of an apple, red and polished like a Christmas ornament, and his teeth cut too close to the core. He spits wet seeds onto the ground as Nacho recalls playground folklore about cyanide and apple slices. Eat one seed and an apple grows in your stomach, eat two and the toxins take effect.

Lalo could swallow it whole and Nacho would think nothing of it. The only poison Nacho worries about is the type administered with intent, not self-afflicted.

“Nachito,” Lalo says as he flicks the withering core into the dirt. “You hungry?”

Nacho wants to say no; it would be a lie.

Lalo is there most times Nacho comes in for collection, puttering around the kitchen or cooking something in anticipation of his arrival. Nacho listens to steak searing on the flat top as he dirties his fingers with drug money and bundles it tight with pink rubber bands. The metallic scrape of a spatula meets the hiss of onions, peppers, and tomatoes sweating in a skillet, the smell of browning flour tortillas and chopped cilantro swimming in the humidity. The ceiling fan overworks itself but the aroma lingers, sticking to Nacho’s clothes and nostril hairs. 

Sometimes the radio is on, turned up until it buzzes unpleasantly, the speakers overblown. Cumbia, banda, mariachi and traditional ballads. Sometimes, Lalo forgoes the radio and hums to himself, usually a song Nacho recognizes but cannot name. It sticks in his head anyways. Other times, Lalo sings and Nacho can hear the perpetual smile in his voice, the corners of his mouth pulled taut. 

It sets the dealers on edge as they come into the restaurant one by one. The sound beckons them inside like a funeral march. They glance behind Nacho, staring through the window into the kitchen where Lalo moves in and out of view. Uneasy, they hand over their earnings. 

Depending on the day, Lalo can make Nacho and Domingo's job easier, reminding the dealers not to short them. Other days, Lalo is a hindrance. The Salamanca presence is overbearing and unignorable, making each transaction tenser than it needs to be. Domingo fidgets as Nacho meticulously counts stack after stack of Benjamin Franklins. The tendons in Nacho's neck ache, the raised clusters of flesh on his abdomen flaring.

“All good,” Nacho says.

He slots the money into an envelope. Domingo nods and leaves, the door swinging violently on its hinges. In contrast, Nacho moves slow. Lalo circles the kitchen, moving from stove to flat top to sink, as Nacho circles him. He hands over the cash and Lalo grins, easy yet unnatural, like a snake oil salesmen trying to broker a deal.

“Did they give you any trouble?” he asks, his mother tongue sugary and languid in his mouth. 

Nacho answers in English. “No, they know not to.”

“Good, good.” Lalo chuckles. He tosses the envelope onto the counter, then goes back to his cooking, flipping the tortillas, crisping them up just right on both sides. He removes two plates from the cupboard and begins dressing the tortillas with skirt steak, diced onions, freshly squeezed lime juice. “Go sit, _sit._ You are going to love this. The butcher set aside this cut special for me.”

Nacho pretends not to be hungry whenever Lalo offers him food, but Lalo never takes no for an answer. He makes a point of cooking enough for two. Maybe to taunt him, maybe to demonstrate that he thinks of Nacho as a friend. Both possibilities seem perverted, and the thought makes Nacho lose his appetite.

They eat together. Lalo sets down two beers between them. He opens them, the caps falling to the table with a _clink clink_ , and they drink together too.

Lalo talks a lot about nothing, about Mexico and his abuelita and the cars he has been fixing up. Nacho listens, but not because he wants to. He eats, but not because he wants to. Fring and the Salamancas have taken that away from him. He has no choice anymore, including but not limited to what he puts in his stomach. Whether that’s Los Pollos Hermanos chicken or Lalo’s home cooking, it makes no difference.

Nacho takes what they give him, chews it and swallows.

Anything in a potent enough dose will kill you, which is why Nacho thinks of meth as a measured poison. Just enough sugar to make the medicine go down. Amber is curled up on the couch, her feet dirty, her hair unbrushed, while Jo twitches on the carpet, pulling out her eyelashes, picking at her nail polish. Nacho is sober, unless the three Coronas in his system count. His eyes are fixed on the television, watching the pixels shift across the screen as he zones out to the manufactured studio laughter of a nineties sitcom. 

Sometimes he wonders why he keeps them around. All they seem to do is clear out his refrigerator and give him messes to come home to, but there’s comfort in knowing they only stay for the drugs. And if the drugs stopped coming, so would they.

Amber is waiting around in the kitchen in nothing but an oversized shirt as her pizza bites defrost. Nacho had been embarrassed and even disgusted by her presence when his father dropped by unexpectedly. Now, he only feels sorry for her. He eyes the scabby sores on her arms, the mascara smudged beneath her eyes like watery soot. The toaster oven dings and she barely notices, her stare looking but not seeing. Nacho puts her pizza bites on a plate, then guides her to the dining room table where she eats. She picks away at her pre-packaged meal like a bird picking at a worm, her stomach undoubtedly shrunken by the heroin.

As Nacho looks on, he has a passing thought that Lalo might be better suited to this. Maybe here he could find someone to take an interest in his cooking. It almost makes Nacho laugh.

He gets the call around one, disturbing Jo who is knocking her head against the wall by his burner. Nacho meets Fring by an out-of-commission power grid, one of their usual meeting spots. No security cameras, no traffic, no witnesses. Fring made Tyrus scout the area to make sure. 

Nacho tells Fring about the goings-on of the business and the leads Lalo has on the Germans. None of the details he can be certain of, given the tight funnel of information, but he leaves that unsaid. Fring advises him to get closer, offering veiled threats, but Nacho feels nothing. Since they kidnapped him in the middle of the night and threatened his father, everything pales in comparison. He is resigned to his situation for as long as it keeps him alive, which might not be for much longer. 

Nacho has heard that poison is the weapon of a woman: methodical, discrete, a slow killing game. Poison is almost cruel in its lack of cruelty, its betrayal amplified by its prescription. It requires trust in a way that guns and knives do not. They will always be objects, foreign and uninvited, but poison becomes you. The body works against itself to digest it, welcoming it inside like a houseguest. It is wholly dependent on the facade. 

More than Lalo, more than anyone, Gustavo Fring seems like the type.

“Does Eduardo Salamanca have any further suspicions towards the location of my operation?” Fring asks. The harsh floodlights hollow out the frown lines around his mouth. They glare in the reflection of his glasses, concealing his eyes with white.

“No, not that I know of,” Nacho says. 

Fring tilts his head and the light shifts. His eyes are visible now, hardened and unkind. “It would be in your best interest to know.”

Nacho nods and the rope around his neck tightens, the slack knotting between fists at either end.

“I can find out. Give me time.”

Nacho visits his father at the shop. They have barely spoken since their last confrontation, but he feels the need to check in on him, make sure they have an understanding. His father would never sell him out, but his demand for police intervention has set Nacho on edge.

He asks about the business. His father matter-of-factly states that he refused the buy-out like he said he would. Nacho should have known; it was naive to think otherwise. As his father putters around the shop, needlessly organizing, sweeping the floor, Nacho checks the books and the register. Despite what his father says, business is slow, and Nacho is further embittered by his stubbornness. 

As a child, Nacho liked what the shop represented more than the shop itself. He liked helping his father, but it was always a chore. While other children were playing, he spent Saturday afternoons indoors, cutting fabric, manning the register, and doing what he was told. He dreamed of an easier way, a loophole that would grant his father the life he wanted for the two of them. But that came at a price, a price his father was unwilling to pay.

Nacho looks up from his clipboard as the shop door opens, the bell jingling pleasantly. Lalo walks inside, a pair of aviators positioned on the bridge of his nose, boots caked with dust and jeans low on his hips. He smirks and Nacho feels the violent sinking of his stomach. His jaw tenses. 

“What are you doing here?” Nacho asks, panic seeping through his voice before he can suppress it. 

Something tells him there’s no danger here—not in the middle of the afternoon with the phone ringing intermittently and the shades open—but his mind instinctually gravitates towards catastrophe. It would be easy to take out a hit on his father here, but Lalo would have no reason to. Sometimes Nacho forgets that. 

“I was driving past. I saw your car.” Lalo flashes a Cheshire grin, his molars on display. He removes his sunglasses. “Ah, is this your _papá_?”

Nacho turns and sees his father standing in the doorway behind the counter. His shoulders are tense, but he seems so small. Old age has shrunken him, even when his integrity has remained unchanged. 

“Yes,” Nacho says. “ _Papá_ , this is Eduardo Salamanca.”

“Nice to meet you. Call me Lalo.”

Nacho is relieved when Lalo keeps his hand at his side, knowing his father would probably refuse to shake it even if Lalo offered. 

“Salamanca,” his father repeats disdainfully. “You work with my son.”

“Well, technically, he works for me. _Para mi familia._ ” Lalo chuckles, his friendliness unwavering. “I have heard a lot about you and your business. We have that in common, keeping our craft, shall we say, within the family.” Lalo glances at Nacho, then back to Nacho’s father. “I might just have a job for you.”

His father appears hesitant, but Nacho gives him a reassuring nod. “ _Papá_.”

“Very well,” his father says. 

As Lalo describes the detailing he wants done on his Mustang, Nacho watches his father carefully. His father has eased up, asking questions about the job, scrawling the request down on a legal pad in familiar loopy handwriting. Despite his cooperation, his father must know the money Lalo is giving him for his services is just as tainted as the money Don Hector offered, albeit in a different way. Nacho allowed this place to be infected by cartel influence, and now the wound is festering, septic and sore.

He’s silent as they work out the going rate and his father instructs him to fetch the upholstery samples. Just like that, he’s reduced to an errand boy, put in place like he used to be whenever the parents of his better-off friends came into the shop to get their custom-made furniture or family heirlooms refitted. Lalo smirks at him and Nacho realizes not much has changed. Again, he wonders whether Lalo is taunting him, but maybe he actually wants what he came for.

When things are settled, Lalo pats Nacho on the back. “I'll leave the car for you to work on, Señor Varga,” he says. “Nachito, be a friend and bring me back to the restaurant, yes?”

Nacho shoots his father a look, a wordless apology, and lets himself be pulled away by obligation.

One morning, Nacho comes in to find Lalo making breakfast. Huevos rancheros with a side of bacon and beans. The eggs are frying in an oiled pan, popping and snapping as they cook over easy and the edges crisp. Lalo likes his tortillas charred, his beans peppery, and they discuss business as he sweats over the stove. Nacho waits for an inconspicuous time to bring up “The Chilean," as the Salamancas call him, but the opportunity never comes.

Lalo whistles lowly as he plates the corn tortillas, the eggs, the beans. He tops it off with a sauce made from boiled tomatoes, onions, jalapeños and guajillo chiles, as well as a fistful of cheese. The smell, spiced and homey, makes Nacho’s mouth water, his palate tingling. 

They sit across from each other. The restaurant is otherwise empty, dust light swimming in the sun that seeps through the window. For a minute, Nacho is able to pretend this place is a homegrown family business, not a hub for cartel activity. At least until Lalo meets his eyes and he’s reminded again.

Nacho festers. He was supposed to be out by now, halfway to some Canadian oil town in the middle of the flatland prairies. Instead, he’s sitting in an unair-conditioned restaurant, forcing down his hunger as Lalo digs into his food. He picks through his eggs and salsa fresca with his eyes. Lalo instructs him to eat, so Nacho digs into the eggs and watches the gooey yolk spill out, twirls the fluffy whites on his fork.

“Why so quiet?” Lalo asks after a moment. “More than usual anyway.” He chuckles, leans back in his chair, and wipes the corner of his mouth on a napkin. He crumples it up and tosses it onto the table. “Is this about the other day?”

“The other day?”

Lalo clicks his tongue. “At the shop. You seemed surprised, Ignacio.”

Nacho stiffens at the sound of his name, his _real_ name. “No, not surprised. You could’ve told me you were interested in getting your interior fixed,” he says. “I could’ve gotten you a better deal.”

Lalo shrugs, shovels a forkful of beans into his mouth and chews slowly. “I like to support small business. Your father's a good man.”

Nacho sighs through his nose. His father used to tell him stories, cautionary folk tales so he would eat his vegetables and go to bed on time. There were stories about ghouls, hobgoblins, scorned women, bogeymen. As Nacho stares at Lalo across from him, he remembers one legend in particular. A man dressed in black, his head fashioned with a wide-brimmed sombrero, spurs and belt buckle jangling as he walked. He would tie his mules to a post outside a house, serenade its occupants with a silver guitar, feed them dirt until they could no longer sleep and eventually starved to death. Nacho looks down at his food. He never understood why they ate the dirt knowing well what they were being fed. 

His father had explained that hunger makes you do a lot of things you wouldn’t otherwise. Nacho wonders if the same goes for greed or if there’s no difference between them.

Nacho takes a bite.

“Good, yeah?” Lalo smiles, even though he has one cheek stuffed with food. 

Nacho nods, thinking of poison again but knowing the taste in his mouth, fatty and heartening, indicates nothing of that sort. It warms his stomach. He feels almost sleepy, the tension he has been holding in every finger and toe loosening.

“I've been meaning to ask you something,” Lalo says. “There's a problem I want you to take care of. It'll be in and out. An easy job, y'know, no trouble to you.”

Lalo leans forward and like the intoxicating pull of his cooking it draws Nacho in. His interest is piqued, and it reminds him why he got into this business in the first place. The promise of it is sometimes too enticing. 

Poison? No, this is the offer of something sweeter.

In and out, just like Lalo said. 

Nacho dumps his gun in the same reservoir he scattered the pills. He removes the magazine and tosses it over the east side of the bridge, then drops a pair of gloves into the water running west. 

The mosquito spattered streetlight is the sole illumination for a mile-long stretch. The quiet is unsettling, punctuated only by the high-pitched din of cicadas. Nacho is less worried about the police showing up than he is about Fring and his henchmen tailing him. He half-expects a familiar van to veer around the corner and cut off his exit, tires screeching like air out of a deflated balloon. 

No such thing happens. 

Nacho gets back into his car and drives off. He follows the directions Lalo gave him, an address written in chicken scratch on a note and taped to his rearview mirror. Lalo offered little explanation, so Nacho is surprised when it leads him to a lower-middle-class neighbourhood located near the South Valley, not far from the Rio Grande. 

Nacho pulls into the driveway. The house is a Spanish colonial, the lawn slicked with dew from being recently watered, the garden well-maintained. The porch light is on despite the late hour. Nacho can tell someone is expecting him. He knocks once, hesitant, then twice, his knuckles rapping hard against the wood. On the third knock, he hears the deadbolt unlock, and the door swings open.

“Ah, Nachito.” Lalo leans against the doorframe, smirking. He’s dressed in loose-fitting pyjama pants, an undershirt, an untied terry cloth bathrobe draped on his shoulders. “Nice of you to come.”

“I did as you asked,” Nacho says flatly.

Lalo grins. “I can see.” He waves him inside. “Come in, come in.”

Nacho follows Lalo from the foyer into the dimly lit kitchen, his footsteps noisy against the tiled floor. He’s not sure what he expected, but Lalo inviting him to his home at two in the morning wasn’t it. More head games, Nacho supposes, a mediation in measured vulnerability that might convince him to let his guard down. That’s all this must be.

“Coffee?” Lalo offers. “Espresso?”

“No, thank you,” Nacho says. 

Lalo ignores him. He fetches two cups from the cupboard and sets them down on the counter. The coffee machine beeps, steaming. “You like refusing me, I can tell, but your eyes say different.”

Nacho scoffs. “Really?”

“Yes, really.” Lalo pours the coffee and it looks blacker than black in the dark. “You can tell a lot about a man from his eyes.” He nudges the cup meant for Nacho across the counter, but Nacho only stares at it. Lalo nudges it again, then lets out a breathy laugh. “You can trust me, my friend. We’re drinking from the same pot. If you die, so do I.” 

Nacho takes it and sips from it gratefully. His fingertips burn against the ceramic, but he likes the feeling. It keeps him awake. “Thank you.” 

“Of course.” Lalo crosses an arm over his chest. His tattoo looks like a Rorschach to untrained eyes. “Did you get rid of the evidence?”

“I did.”

Lalo frowns behind the lip of his cup. “Ah, but not all of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve got blood on your clothes.” Lalo points. “Just there.”

Nacho looks down. There’s a petal-shaped smudge of red near the breast pocket of his patterned button-down, crusting like a scab. Lalo tut-tuts, tongue pressed up against his teeth. He sets his coffee on the table and takes a step forward. “Let me fix that for you.”

Nacho swallows. “No need.”

“I insist,” Lalo says. “It’s no trouble. Please, take it off.”

Nacho does as he’s told, unbuttoning his button-down and handing it over. He stands there in his undershirt with his coffee in hand as Lalo stoops down to fetch a bottle of Clorox from beneath the sink. He turns on the tap. He lets the shirt soak until the water becomes rust-coloured, then begins scrubbing away at the stain with a rag and a splash of bleach. Nacho observes Lalo, noting how out-of-place and motherly his attention is, how suffocating, how sweet and sinister. Lalo rinses the shirt thoroughly, then drapes it over the back of a chair to air-dry. 

“See, no trouble,” Lalo says.

Nacho is silent. He drops his eyes to the floor, tracing the cracks in the grout, knowing he should thank Lalo but not finding enough humility to do so. He feels defiant, vitriol simmering under his skin. Lalo approaches him. In the low light, he’s an inky and shapeless figure, looming above him, a serenade in his throat. Nacho feels fingers beneath his chin, tilting his head upwards. 

“Look at me.”

So he does, finding his eyes, and he realizes Lalo tastes more like sugar than poison.

**Author's Note:**

> Tale as old as time. Eve and the apple, Paradise Lost, Persephone and Hades, the forbidden fruit, etc. The dynamic is there and I had to write about it. 
> 
> Let me know your thoughts! Thanks for reading.
> 
> Edit: And thank you so much to krokorobin on tumblr for [this lovely artwork!](https://krokorobin.tumblr.com/post/612134093064437760/lalo-tastes-more-like-sugar-than-poison)


End file.
